AuthorTopic: Stay Anonymous Online (Read 315 times)

Here is a quick guide to keep your private business private. I have written this guide based on Android phones as that is what I own but most if not all will be pertanent to IOS devices as well.

MobileOwning a mobile phone is almost a necessity now for most people but they are probably the worst item you can have when it comes to your privacy and the worst culprit is location services. Your position can be tracked to a couple of meters even when you don’t have a SIM card in your phone. Your phone will still be looking for nearby mobile towers and hence your location to EVERY mobile provider with a tower that is in range. Police can use the various signal strengths from every nearby tower to locate you very accurately. Of course you are a law abiding citizen and the police would have no need to find you, right?By default, Android uses cell towers, GPS and public WIFI hotspots to track you. With WIFI on, your phone is always sending signals which includes your phone’s ID as it looks for networks it can connect to. If you drive past a MacDonalds, KFC or Coffee Club, your location has been given away. Google also keeps a history of where you have been. The feature is called location history. It is a particularly sinister piece of work where all the places you have ever been are stored on Google’s servers. Luckily you can delete your location history from their servers at the following web address. Just remember that Google probably keeps an offline backup of your location history on a tape somewhere.In this section we will:Set your phone to only use GPS for location dataFAKE your GPS locationDisable location historyDelete your location history from Google’s serversThis is mostly Android specific but I’m sure you can adjust things to do similar on Apple devices.To begin securing your phone, start by turning off location tracking via mobile towers and WIFI and use GPS only. Open settings and find the location icon. The top item when you open your location settings should say mode. Press it. Choose the bottom item which says GPS only.Now comes a fun part and it’s easy: Faking your GPS location. Go on the google play store and search for an app called “Fake GPS Location” Install it and tell it where you would like everyone to believe you are. Be imaginative and reply with your most humourous/wierd place where all those pesky apps now believe you to be.

Next go back to the first location screen and look for location history. Open that and find the toggle for off. Now to delete your location history from Google’s servers. For this you will need you google login name and password which you would have created when you first got your phone. I hope you remembered it. Go to the link below, read carefully and follow the instructions provided.

Buy a dedicated GPS device for navigationWhether it is a TomTom, Garmin or Navman. Read the above section and you’ll know why.

Opting Out of targeted web advertising.You know all those ads you see on just about every web page you visit? They are tracking you. Whether you click on the ad or not.This doesn’t mean you won’t get advertising from these companies but they will stop tracking which websites you visit. There are many websites that offer bulk opt-out services. Here is a link one to start you off: PrivacyChoice.org

Blocking Web Advertising Altogether (or block entire websites)Using this method, you can block some or as many online ad companies (or any website) from putting a toe onto your phone or computer as you wish. This will make some websites uglier and even behave funny but I’m sure you’ll live with that. FYI: 127.0.0.1 is your phone’s own website. Using this number is like driving down a dead-end street.In this section you will:Download ES file explorerLocate your hosts fileAdd websites to block from your phone

First of all, you should download ES File Explorer from Google App Store. Conversely, install the application and kick start the web filtering process! Open ES File Explorer and click on the “/” button. Conversely, you should select “System” and then “etc”. Now, tap the “hosts” file, click on 3 vertical dots on bottom of screen, choose Open as –> Text –> ES Note Editor –> Edit.In the ES Note Editor, you must redirect the DNS. To accomplish this, you must type a new line: “127.0.0.1 www.<blockedwebsite>.com” (of course, you should not type the quotes and <blockedwebsite> represents the site that has to be blocked). For example, if you want to block You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login, you must type 127.0.0.1 You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login. This will block the web page and redirect you to 127.0.0.1 when someone searches for You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login in your cell phone.Never Use Social Media. Period.I would have liked to put this way up at the start, it’s so important. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, google etc are so much the biggest enemies of your privacy I can’t emphasise this enough. Delete your account, delete the apps from your phone, block them using the section Blocking Web Advertising above. From a privacy, anonimity and secrecy perspective, they give me the shuddering creeps. Really truly they do.Let me put it this way. Every time you visit a website (every news website includes a plethora of them for sharing just for starters), that icon you see is spying on you if you have their app installed. They learn what you have installed on your phone/computer, which other websites you visit, where you are, who your friends are and what they like too (so likely you too), where you shop, what you buy and other things I don’t want them to know. And their spider-web grows.Never use the Google Seach EngineYour every search phrase and link you click is recorded and analysed. Instead, it is recommended you use duckduckgo.com for your web searches. It’s not as good but you aren’t selling your soul to the devil. Duckduckgo.com doesn’t record any information about you.The following are optional but still highly recommendedUse a VPNWe are now into the pay money territory but for $15 a month, you are taking a giant leap towards personal discretion. Basically, when you are on the web, the VPN will encrypt your data and anonymise your identity between you and the VPN so they can only track you as far as the VPN. They don’t store any identifying information either.Use Temporary email AddressesWhen joining a website or online service do you get asked to provide a valid email address where they duly send an email with a link to authenticate you? But afterwards you don’t give a stuff about their offers or rewards or anything else they think? Then use a temporary email address. There are heaps. Just do a search. But here’s one I found in 10 seconds and have never used.You are not allowed to view links.
Register or LoginDon’t Store Anything on your own deviceIf your device is lost, stolen, or confiscated, the thief can potentially use your device for malicious purposes. The applications, services, music, video’s, photo’s and your contact lists are theirs for the abusing. Many of us are familiar with DropBox and other remote storage services even though few of us have ever used one. But they are useful for emergency situations to keep your important stuff secure from situations such as theft, destruction by fire etc. The biggest problem with these services is that the things you store aren’t discreet. They are either unencrypted or the company has the key to conveniently decrypt them upon request. At worst, they can scan your files to get a better profile on you or share with ASIO, the NSA, CIA etc. I dont’ like companies who know me better than me. Better not to use a big name commercial service like that. But there is are better alternatives where your privacy, security and secrecy are important to you. The one I will focus on is called SIA.SIA is basically a secure remote storage solution based on crypto-currency (crypto-currency will usurp just about every currency IMO (buy bitcoin)). It can cost as little or less than a third of using a centralised service like dropbox. You pay for your remote storage using their crypto-currency and therefore get the benefit of un-tracibility. Your files are not stored in any central location but are scattered across 3 or more hosts who have no knowledge of who or what they are storing. All they store is an encrypted fragment of a file. Anyone can be a host and because they only hold a small part (called a shard) of an encrypted file there is no way any individual other than yourself can obtain the whole file. Encrypted or not. The next advantage of SIA is it can be installed onto a USB thumdrive so there are no tell-tale traces on your computer that you even use a service like that.TOREveryone who talks about online privacy talks about TOR. It is excellent on keeping your online activities private. It’s a web browser at it’s simplest. That’s why crims, druggies and pedophiles love it. Just because you don’t want to associate with them isn’t an argument not to use TOR. TOR is the price of freedom of web navigation. Did I mention that TOR is slow? I mean really slow. I mean 56k dial-up modem slow? Or slower? Don’t let it’s lack of speed put you off your private browsing. You can use it to browse regular webisites too. But it’s still just as slow.

Awesome way to get attention that!By taking steps to hide what you are doing it becomes evident that you should not be doing some things/one you are doing!Freaking awesome there!

How about this. Drive an old vehicle, use a UBD, leave your damn phone at home, avoid tollways, use cb radio meet at public places with no survailence cameras and do all your communicating face to face, pay cash for everything.

Do not tell anyone anything ever! Do not partake of any mind altering substances legal or not or hookers again legal or not!

Keep any and all important stuff on a stick and completely clean/wipe/renew your computer often!A second computer is handy for this!

Awesome way to get attention that!By taking steps to hide what you are doing it becomes evident that you should not be doing some things/one you are doing!Freaking awesome there!

Actually it is the reverse. About 90% of all traffic on the internet is encrypted. By encrypting everything, you would be joining the majority of internet traffic. A fair bit of what you do online is already encrypted like online shopping and banking for example. I am just promoting the idea of encrypting the rest of what you do online as per your right to privacy.

Awesome way to get attention that!By taking steps to hide what you are doing it becomes evident that you should not be doing some things/one you are doing!Freaking awesome there!

Actually it is the reverse. About 90% of all traffic on the internet is encrypted. By encrypting everything, you would be joining the majority of internet traffic. A fair bit of what you do online is already encrypted like online shopping and banking for example. I am just promoting the idea of encrypting the rest of what you do online as per your right to privacy.

Just as a closed safe begs to be opened something clearly hidden begs to be found! its value matters not until it is found!

Awesome way to get attention that!By taking steps to hide what you are doing it becomes evident that you should not be doing some things/one you are doing!Freaking awesome there!

How about this. Drive an old vehicle, use a UBD, leave your damn phone at home, avoid tollways, use cb radio meet at public places with no survailence cameras and do all your communicating face to face, pay cash for everything.

Do not tell anyone anything ever! Do not partake of any mind altering substances legal or not or hookers again legal or not!

Keep any and all important stuff on a stick and completely clean/wipe/renew your computer often!A second computer is handy for this!

Old school! Love it.

But I also like my internet ... so ... yeah. Little from column A and a little from column B seems like the go.

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'Just how dangerous is he?' 'Compared to what? ... The bubonic plague?' (No Country for Old Men)